


Birdsong

by aderyn



Series: Deep Map [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Storytelling, The Adventure of the Empty House, a whole lot of wings, cemeteries of London, revivals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:20:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The cemetery is full of birdsong, as it should be.</p>
<p>(John. I’ve brought you back to life as well.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birdsong

**Author's Note:**

> For  Chapbook with thanks for the inspiration, and  
> [professorfangirl, bird girl.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/pseuds/professorfangirl)
> 
> [Lovely cover by Hamstermoon!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/941165)

_"I have been watching crows and now it is dark  
Together they led night into the creaking oaks..."—W.S. Merwin, “New Moon in November”_

 

It’s at the cemetery that he hears the rooks.  Settling in for the night, a whole _storytelling_ of them, sounds like, he thinks, having heard that word once (a parliament, a clamour, or was it _glamour_ ; a whole _rookery_ of rooks, he thinks, but not one of you).

A whole storytelling but there’s not one story he can tell save the one, which has an ending he does not like.

“Goodnight, Sherlock,” he says.  The wings are soft all around him, the calls, but the headstone doesn’t call back.

*******

It’s at a crime scene that he sees, really sees, a crow for the first time.  It’s not plucking out the dead man’s eyes as it might in a bad film; it’s just watching them solemnly ( _un-demonize me doctor, detective_ , _exorcists_ ) until it rises, calling, wild and alone.

“Ah,” Sherlock says, suddenly the ornithomancer, “possibly a good omen.”

*******

The cemetery is full of birdsong, as it should be, honouring the dead with evensong and rooks.

“Goodnight, Sherlock,” he says, “Goodnight.”

*******

In Afghanistan, land of pigeons and falcons, he once clipped a dove’s leg free from twine while some men watched and afterwards blessed him in Pashto as a good man, not a veterinarian obviously but a healer, and that translates cross-species; he can mend wings as well as arms, set fine bones, salve scaled feet, hear the whistle of wings, high, as a patient wheels away.

Once, in London again, as he was in a desperate flutter of knife and hands cutting rope from Sherlock’s arms (a case, of course, gone wrong), he thought about that bird and choked with relief as Sherlock palmed his neck and whispered, _John._ ( _John._ I’ve brought you back to life as well.)

*******

Death isn’t a perilous woman; that’s wrong, John thinks; no good to stand at the grave, amid these sinuous monuments, and think _spirited away_ , but there was a woman, _the_ woman, who knew, knew that flight from fantasies was death.  Who bound those who’d try (even you, even you; who knows what you dreamed of, grounded and bound.) And she was lovely, wasn’t she, naked, sparrowhawks in her eyes, and one on each shoulder.

*******

There are blue tits in the bedrooms of Baker Street. (Take that as you will; they’re _birds,_ with a sweet chipping call, repetitive, sweet.)  He notices them now because they sing at the gravesite, have sung, as they will, in his dreams.

*******

The intimacy, Sherlock said once, with which one knows the comings and goings of birds--it’s as the comings and goings of police and patients, detectives and doctors, librarians and teachers and florists, buyers and sellers of secrets, addicts and fences and swindlers and murderers and thieves.  The city with its wings and its slates, its brooms and its nests and its smoke, the wheel of the year, of every year, the headstones with their silence, and the rooks.

*******

Regent's Park, three _a.m._ Bench slats on John’s denimed thighs. An owl. A nightjar. The post-witching hour flights of London, its roosts and its haunts. The rolling call of the rock dove.  (No, that’s for morning, for mourning.)

Sounds. Salt.

( _John._ I’ve brought you back to life too.)

_You’ll always be a blackbird to me._

*******

There’s a landing (not the official name for it) of sparrows on the gate, one on the awning, when he returns.

Baker Street is strange with song as John finds himself, odd in the head and returning to the place of his birth, standing inside the open door with his bag while Sherlock calls, hoarse, from the sofa,

_“John?”_

“I’m only here because Mrs. Hudson called, said you were ill.”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, “I’m sorry.”

John’s hands are behind his back and then his bag is on the table and his arm round Sherlock’s shoulders, using the sharp scapulae to lift.

“Drink,” he says.

And Sherlock’s saying, I’m so sorry, so sorry.

And John’s saying sit up, sit up and shut up, shut up, and let me see, and thinking (he can’t help it) of those swifts he saw once, a whole _smoke_ of swifts, a great swift-tornado, descending into a chimney. The heart’s like that, it must be, and here’s Sherlock’s quick heart and hot blood, a man transformed, homeostasis gone _aves_ , and that’s...

“Ah, Christ ,”says John, we need drugs and water and miracles and time.  

“Would you stay,” Sherlock says.

“I’m not leaving you here like this, am I.” (With a probable case of whatever this is, cut free, lifted into the sky, whistling, wrists, claws, rubbed back to life, the sounds of it, the settling down, and who knows what else.)

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant,” says John, and lie down, and shh.

The rooks in their story, their beds and their stone.

*******

It isn’t very long until they’re in a cemetery again.  Who murders someone in a churchyard, John thinks and Sherlock doesn’t think, is just wild with evidence and life, the harsh cries of the whole flock in his blood.(John! John! Over here! And otherwise a rare silence.)

Goodnight Sherlock, he thinks, I’ll say it tonight, to your face, your solemn face that no-one will one day write is sweet, but me.

The dead have come back to life, John thinks, (oh joy) and no birds sing.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this lovely post by quarryquest on birdsong in Sherlock. ](http://quarryquest.livejournal.com/714074.html)
> 
>  [The bird-filled cemeteries and sinuous monuments of London](http://mymetropole.wordpress.com/2010/06/12/top-5-london-cemeteries-2/)
> 
>  
> 
> [Highgate Cemetery (and nature preserve)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highgate_Cemetery)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  [Blue tit singing ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpzQTxf3HbE)
> 
>  
> 
> [Rooks(Corvus frugilegus)](http://blx1.bto.org/birdfacts/results/bob15630.htm)
> 
>  
> 
> [Beautiful rook photo](http://www.flickr.com/photos/24580998@N08/4531488367/)  
>  
> 
> “Light thickens; and the crow  
> Makes wing to the rooky wood...” --Macbeth Act 3, Scene 2
> 
>  
> 
> “...And this is why I sojourn here  
> Alone and palely loitering,  
> Though the sedge is withered from the lake,  
> And no birds sing.”—Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”


End file.
